One of the issues we’ve been facing lately is the need for a “re-up”, if you will. Shopping on Saturdays for a week’s worth of produce has resulted in wilted greens and an empty fruit drawer by Thursday and Friday. We need a mid-week market run but it has been tough to summon the energy to load the kids into the car and navigate the market outnumbered. I suddenly long for my days studying abroad in Paris where there was a farmers’ market one block from my apartment that sold on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In fact, the city is teeming with neighborhood sidewalk markets like that. Now, I know nothing about the economics of the Parisian market system but perhaps it’s like their universal health care – something we should look into.
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Shortly after attending the reading and interview with the “Plenty” authors, I received this article from Conservation Magazine from a friend. It is actually 5 mini articles within one larger story, the first of which questions the true environmental impact of eating locally:
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I had the good fortune of sitting in on an interview with Alisa Smith & J.B. Mackinnon, authors of Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet, over the weekend. You can read a more in-depth account of the discussion here, but one of the things it made me realize is that in order to be a little more accountable to the challenge, I should probably set some parameters for what we are doing. I was blown away by the dedication the authors had to the 100-mile diet. I mean, they even made salt. And they were concerned with whether the feed that the chickens laying their eggs were eating was local. I’m going to need to get a lot less selfish, or a lot more productive and resourceful to even consider coming close to what they did. After all, this IS Seattle and we DO have winter here: I would need a much greater incentive to give up my coffee than just reducing a carbon footprint or two. Having said that, here are some of the things we pledge to do:
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My first job out of college was at a publishing company in New York in their ad sales training program. The department was made up of 30-odd recent college grads, hired, apparently, for being competitive, aggressive and driven (or so it seemed to me once I met everyone). In other words, it was quite the Type-A environment.
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Last weekend we had some friends over for a casual dinner. When we entertain casually, I really mean it. In fact, some cultures would probably consider it lunch as the casual dinner usually involves eating with the kids… at 5 pm. I kid you not.
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When I was in college I didn’t make a single friend in any one of my classes. Not one. I don’t know what my problem is but I find it hard to meet people unless it’s in a setting of forced interaction, like on a team (in college I ran cross country and track) or at the workplace. Mike and I? We met at work. The best of times Before I began writing my portion of this blog, I sat down and read Kathleen Whitson’s posts from last year. Not only was I struck by the quality of writing, but also by how knowledgeable she was about farms, the farmers themselves and the provenance of her food. As we cruise the U-District market as a family, I marvel at how remarkable this is. The way we shop, with a gigantic double stroller and kids who range from tolerant (at best) to crying and kicking each other (at worst), we’re lucky if we get home with any food at all. It’s all we can do to select the products we want, throw some money at the person behind the counter (hopefully in the correct amount) and
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As we set off on this challenge I can’t help but feel that it’s a bit like finding religion. Suddenly we find ourselves with a standing weekend morning obligation. An obligation which we’re happy to fulfill and which we literally need to feed ourselves. As such, I feel the need to come clean about some things before we begin:
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